Nearly there. Just had one day at home between travel and had lots of work to get out the door today. Almost there now.

Review is currently at 4800 words! And the text is about an hour from being done. Then the pictures. videos are already online and awaiting links and Adam has volunteered to help me put it together. Good chance of being online tonight or failing that sometime tomorrow - probably after my flight.

Minor nitpick though, as a non-nauticam user, when you're writing a lot about the controls x, y, z on the housing, without an illustrated picture it is really difficult to visualize clearly what you're talking about. Would have loved to have a picture of the housing with legends on controls.

Now, I was thinking that the D7000 would be the one that will allow me to finally ditch my D80 and this really looks like it. I'm most impressed with the sunburst.
I have the D700 as well, but no housing for it and considering the D7000 does video...

Despite some attractiveness, I doubt I will go Nauticam and think I will stay Ikelite.
3000$ for a housing to house a $1500 camera is a lot of $ if you're diving less than 2 months a year.

Fantastic review Alex; hard to find fault with this camera as an underwater camera. Is there anything at all that you missed on this camera compared say to your D700?

I miss the ISO for free of the D700. As you know, the D700 allows you to turn up the ISO to 800 with no detectable loss in image quality. The D7000 is very impressive at higher ISOs, but it is a sliding scale from base ISO. The problem is really a frame of mind thing.

Minor nitpick though, as a non-nauticam user, when you're writing a lot about the controls x, y, z on the housing, without an illustrated picture it is really difficult to visualize clearly what you're talking about. Would have loved to have a picture of the housing with legends on controls.

Good point. I will add some annotations to a couple of the images when I have a decent internet connection.

Really want to thank you for an excellent review. With your location and time restrains, is truly amazing in scope and detail. I seems to be a great camera for the price with 1/320 sync, higher ISO acceptability, HD video, and my fav, 100% view finder. Analytical tests aside, an “in vita” underwater test is what I wanted. I can exhale now. I look forward to the Feb. housing shoot out. Cayman?Bob

While this is partly true - perfect ergonomics for cold water would probably be imperfect in the tropics. Oversized dials and knobs would be clumsy and the sharp edges on dials (needed to grip with numb fingers and 7mm gloves/mitts) are not comfortable when you soft fingers (without gloves) after 5-6 hours of underwater photography on a warm day in the tropics.

Alex

p.s. More controversially, the same is true of divers. I have lost count of the number of British divers who think that because they can dive in the UK - it means they don't need to learn anything to dive in the tropics.